North Korea and Weapons of Mass Distraction

Not a real squirrel, of course. We squirrels invented a lot, but not nuclear weapons. That’s all on you humans. But “Squirrel!” is a common slang for distraction. Not that we’re easily distracted. Instead, the slang implies, we’re why dogs jerk at their leashes and drag their owners toward trees. Or maybe they just want to sniff other dogs’ pee.

Appearing at an event at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club, where Trump is on a 17-day “working vacation,” he said that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.”

“They will be met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” Trump said, as his administration faces one of its most serious foreign policy challenges of his presidency.

North Korea said on Wednesday it is “carefully examining” plans for a missile strike on the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump told the North that any threat to the United States would be met with “fire and fury”.

North Korea has made no secret of plans to develop a nuclear-tipped missile able to strike the United States and has ignored international calls to halt its nuclear and missile programs.

The strike plan would be put into practice at any moment once leader Kim Jong Un makes a decision, a spokesman for the Korean People’s Army (KPA) said in a statement carried by the North’s state-run KCNA news agency.

“The KPA Strategic Force is now carefully examining the operational plan for making an enveloping fire at the areas around Guam with medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 in order to contain the U.S. major military bases on Guam including the Anderson Air Force Base,” the spokesman said.

“I think the rotund ruler in Pyongyang is crazy but he’s not ready to go to the brink,” the senator said.

However, McCain said Tuesday’s news that North Korea may have achieved the miniaturization of nuclear weapons and has developed nuclear warheads needs to be taken seriously.

“It scares me as far as its potential is concerned because they have 1,000 rockets aimed at (South Korea capital) Seoul that could set that city on fire,” he said.

That’s exactly what worries me. North Korea’s long-range missiles are notoriously unreliable, but Kim wouldn’t need those to reach Seoul. Even if their short-range missiles are as inaccurate as their long range missiles, Seoul is only 35 miles from the border. And whether you’re aiming a baseball or a ballistic missile, it’s easier to hit a target that’s closer.

Would Kim just quietly accept that devastation? No. But I doubt he’d launch long-range missiles at Alaska or Hawaii, or even Guam or Japan. If those failed, he’d be even more humiliated. Instead, he’d launch those shorter-range rockets at Seoul …

… and then I doubt even the saner voices could stop the God-King’s “fire and fury.” If anyone dared to mention that no one has used nuclear weapons since World War II, the God-King would probably fire them … and keep saying “You’re fired!” until he got to someone who would transmit the launch orders.

Maybe, but I doubt it. More likely, a whole lot of us would be terrified that the God-King let the nuclear genie out of a 70-year bottle … and a whole lot of us would remember Hillary Clinton’s wise words:

A man who can be provoked by a tweet should not have his hands anywhere near the nuclear codes. #DebateNight

3 Comments

winterbanyan
on August 9, 2017 at 9:14 am

I can hardly think of a worse man to be in charge right now than Trump. He’s every bit as mad as the guy in Korea. (I’m sorry, can’t type his name correctly because the spell checker keeps changing it and I’m tired of arguing with a machine.) We must be making South Korea extremely nervous right now. Residents of Guam, OTOH, claim they’re used to this saber rattling. Appalling thought.

It’s appalling that the survival of the world might come down to men in the military who simply refuse to follow orders. I hope saner heads prevail here because the one running the show needs a rubber room.

It’s not just Seoul, it’s the almost 24,000 US troops in South Korea. Apparently Trump thinks nukes are just “really big bangs,” when in reality they’re far worse. It’s not just the “bang,” it’s the fallout and long-term issues, not to mention that you’re not likely to get everything with them. It’s really stupid to be blithely throwing around threats like that, but then again, stupid seems to follow Trump all the time.

beltwayjim
on August 9, 2017 at 10:05 am

I remember earlier miscalculations.

The invasion of South Korea by forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on
25 June 1950 was one of the defining moments of the Cold War. The North Korean attack so
alarmed Washington that President Truman abruptly reversed the meticulously considered policy recently formulated by both the Department of State and Department of Defense that had placed Korea outside the American defense perimeter, and instead committed U.S. armed forces to the defense of South Korea. Viewing the North Korean assault as a case of Soviet aggression, likely a probing action to test Western resolve, the Truman administration concluded that the conflict with the Soviet Union had entered a new and more dangerous stage. The United States, it believed, needed to respond by preparing itself militarily and politically to meet the next act of Soviet aggression.” https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Working_Paper_8.pdf